Occasionally I am asked about the most important books of my life, and being an English major in college, I am happy to oblige. Often my choices are more driven by creativity and fiction rather than business, with a few strong exceptions. Here are my top business-related books. (Also see the Social Media MBA Reading List)

It has been related to me over the course of my work life that I score very low on the “sense of urgency” scale. One time, a long time ago, that data from a personality test was used to not give me a job that I was tremendously qualified for. “Yes,” I said, trying to answer the interviewer’s concerns, “I work pretty hard to keep projects and relationships out of the urgent mode.” She didn’t like my explanation.

Today, I had two different examples of team members trying to get under my skin and push the big red urgent button.

The first one was simply a request to check on a project.

INCIDENT #1

ME: Okay, so do you have a hard deadline for this project?
THEM: Boss wants it up ASAP. The final copy should be to you soon.

And there was one other person involved in the scoping and execution of this project and she weighed in that the design elements were almost complete.

THEM: My boss and my boss’ boss are clamoring to get this out.

Okay, so this person still does not have all the elements necessary to get her project put together.

THEM: I should have final copy for you this afternoon.

And after the second person accepted the need to schedule some design cycles to help this project get in Lotus Notes.

THEM: I still do not think this is the answer. I am sending through Outlook.

We have a meeting scheduled in a few hours between the three of us. But this “Quarterly” publication has gotten delayed and perhaps forgotten until this ASAP urgent request. I suppose we’ll know more at the meeting, if the requester can hold off on her outrage and urgency until then.

Okay, so that’s pretty funny. Let me make a few observations.

Always know what the hard deadline is. The questions, “What is driving this deadline? A trade show? A publication date?” should always be asked.

ASAP is not an appropriate answer. That’s the “pants on fire” answer. It assigns the highest priority to a project that may or may not require such urgent attention. “Her boss’s boss” is really not an appropriate whip either.

When people are offering their help, and you have a meeting set to go over the project, lofting additional hand grenades into the conversation is not helpful. “I still do not think this is the answer.”

When you have a meeting set there is little need to escalate the discussion via email threads.

INCIDENT #2

In general admin-type people are really awesome corporate citizens. Occasionally they want to push their agenda a bit hard before they understand the issues.

At 10:30 this morning, I got an email from a team member asking me to take a look at her queue of projects in the system. She complained in the initial email that “some were quite old.” I had not seen her queue before. I responded immediately.

ME: Sure. Let me look at the list and see which ones I might need additional information on. I’ll get back to you shortly.

At 1:30 she wrote, “My requests keep falling through the cracks.” I had already responded favorably and was looking at her tickets. So I responded again, with an affirmative. I was “on it.”

At 1:42 I get an email from a tech person in the IT/DEV department asking if one of my colleagues or I would be the person responsible to handle her requests. Before I was able to respond…

At 1:50 she wrote to my supervisor (I suppose she didn’t like my “on it” response.) “Can you call me as soon as possible please. I don’t seem to be getting anywhere with this.” At least she cc’d me on the email.

At 1:51 I got another email from the IT/DEV group saying she’d sent my team member a note earlier this week that was “not answered.”

At this point I threw up my hands. Rather than respond to any of the emails. I needed to speak with my supervisor and give him a heads up on what was blowing up, but had no business blowing up.

Of the 5 issues in the queue, 3 were simple URL/Link changes. And while I can’t make them, I assigned the appropriately and they will be handled in the order they were received.

Issue #4 was the one she had written my supervisor about earlier in the week. Today is Wednesday. It is a request that cannot be completed without additional information from the requester, the woman having the conniption. We need a new meeting to define the project and scope. At that meeting I intend to ask, “So what’s driving this deadline?”

Issue #5 was put in last week and my supervisor and I met with her to go over her request. We are in process with providing her with a project plan.

When you ask for a request please consider how you frame the urgency. If the answer to every request is “ASAP, my boss and the president of the free world is waiting on it” then the Indians have no way to sort through the list and decide what to start on. When you don’t have an answer to that question, but you also don’t have your content ready, please have a tiny bit of patience. When someone offers their support but you don’t like their answer… Well, think about how you respond.

“I still do not think this is the answer,” sorta cuts off the conversation. And if the meeting is in an hour with all parties involved, perhaps that wasn’t necessary at all.

It will be interesting to see how the planning meeting goes, 15 minutes from now. My supervisor and I have chatted and laughed at my first incident. “Somebody got mad at you, and it’s not your fault. Welcome to our world.”

Urgency may not be the answer.

When I was inside at Dell my manager once calmed me down on an urgent issue that was burning up some email threads. She asked me.

“Is this your project?”

“No.”

“Who asked you to do this?”

“The project lead.”

“This is not your project. I’m going into a meeting. If it’s not my urgency, it’s probably not yours. Since I’m the one who manages your time and work.”

WordPress has come a long way since I began using it in 2007. Now it’s probably the most stable, secure, and simple CMS (or hosting platform) that you can get. And it’s free.

Step One: If you’re not self-hosting your WordPress site stop immediately and get a hosting package. (I’ve used A2Hosting for years and they are extremely inexpensive, stable, helpful, and they run Control Panel which you want.)

Step Two: The Plugins

Over the last 5 years I’ve tried a lot of WordPress plugins. Here are the essentials that I always start with.

iThemes Security – a simple and robust security plug-in. In addition to securing the simple holes in WP, it gives you the easy ability to set up a new Admin login URL. This will keep about 95% of the login breach attempts.

Contact 7 – a nice forms system. Highly configurable.

Find and Replace – Wanna do some serious replacing? Works with HTML as well as TXT.

FD Feedburner – Though RSS feeds have falling quit a bit, this is the best way to use Feedburner to offer you content for almost every system.

Jetpack by WordPress – a great system for adding (non-Google Analytics) and a host of other features. Shut off the features you don’t use to keep the overhead lower.

Simple Sitemap – the easiest way to create a post index. I like the older version, but you can configure the new version to your heart’s content.

WP Optimize – kill the comment spam from your site and optimize your databases in one quick process.

WP-reCaptcha – good Captcha spam stopper.

WP-User Online – gives insight into your current visitors

Count Per Day – another good analytics package with vastly different numbers than GA and a simple way to display various stats in a widget.

For added security I have been using Bulletproof Security that does a lot of extra things to lock WP down. I use the free version.

Event Calendar – for coordinating your events.

Editorial Calendar – for working with others and coordinating deadlines from within WP.

Yoast SEO – so easy it’ll make you feel silly paying for SEO from a vendor.

There are a ton more plugins loaded on this site right now, but this is my “must have” package that I start every engagement with. What are your favorite plugins that I’m missing? Tell me and I’ll add them to my list.

Twitter is in trouble. As one of the initial social media/internet darlings, Twitter has floundered where Facebook, Instagram (also Facebook) and Snapchat have thrived. But Twitter is a different beast all together. This week, according to sources (Twitter is now a news app – Mashable) Twitter moved it’s mobile app in the Apple Online Store from Social Media Networking to News. Seems they were tired of always coming in about #5 on the social media list. Their hope is that a #1 or #2 position on News will give them more visibility and thus more downloads and more NEW tweeters.

But Twitter’s problems run a lot deeper than classification, and Twitter has itself to blame for the problems and one hell of a hard time if they decided to fix them.

BIG PROBLEM ONE

Twitter has millions of fake and spammy accounts. They sometimes even promote the spammy accounts in their “who to follow” recommendations.

I’m going to make a guess, that of Twitters 310 million users last month, 1/3 of them are fake, scam, or auto-tweeting robots. Now Twitter could do something quit easily to shut these types of accounts down, they are easy to spot. But for the investors, Twitter needs to show growth numbers, and spammers are new accounts too. So if Twitter were to really go after the fake and fraudulent accounts they would kill their growth (which is useless growth for its users, btw) and in fact kill their investment numbers.

BIG PROBLEM TWO

Robo-twitter accounts are created every second. And the second problem Twitter has is they are too easy to set up. There’s no phone # verification.

All you need is a unique email address (established free on g-mail or yahoo) something like 3234FFRdx@gmail.com and you can then set up your new Twitter account. @3234FFRdx who shows up most prominently under their user name SocialMarketingMaster.

In fact, let’s do a test. I just made those account numbers up, but I’m going to set up a new Twitter account and time how long it takes. The time is 1:20 cst.

Step One:

Step Two: SKIP IT.

Step Three: Username. My random letters and numbers was already taken so I added a A2 on the end.

Step Six: Upload a photo. I did two cats. And viola we’re now on Twitter.

Finished 1:24 cst.

First follower 1:26 cst.

Rinse and repeat over and over again. I’ll keep a tab on how long Twitter allows me to use this account without confirming my random email address. Now I will do nothing more on this account. I did add a header image as well. Let’s watch how this account grows. My guess is they will never MAKE me confirm my email address, so even that is a bluff. The scammers in India and Pakistan coffee shops are a lot faster than me and can build a new Twitter account in 2 minutes, with a profile images, header image, and recycled bio full of hashtags and marketing mumbo jumbo, what ever they think will cause people to follow the account.

FAIL: BIG STRIKE BACK FOR TWITTER

Uh oh. 1:35 cst.

The say they are going to verify via phone number of delete my account. They also say instructions have been emailed to my fake gmail account. I wonder if the bounce triggered the terms violation.

I’m not about to associate this account with a real phone number. And I’m not bored enough to carry this experiment further by establishing the gmail account first so there is no bounce. But I’m sure there are ways around the PHONE connection because there was an option to “skip it.”

So my SocialMarketngMaster account will die shortly, according to their terms of service. But you can be assured that there are ways around the phone verification, and gmail addresses are as easy to set up as Twitter accounts.

On Twitter 1/3 of the traffic and activity is generated by spammers, robots, and scam artists trying to sell you massive groups of Twitter followers just like the account we almost set up.

NEXT UP for TWITTER

Getting people off the fire hose of Twitter.com and onto Tweetdeck.twitter.com. But for newbies it’s over whelming. And the use of Twitter without a tool is maddening. So their retention rate for new active accounts is very low as well.

Whats the answer?

Requiring a phone account, like Facebook, would certainly slow down the scam process. And each account would be tied to an actual phone number that could be traced. Legitimate users wouldn’t be afraid of that, they do it now on Facebook. But how would a business, like myself, generate 5 – 10 accounts for various customers without getting 5 – 10 phone numbers to attach them to? It’s a problematic solutions.

But they could start by really cracking on the spammy accounts. Send warnings to the over users. And delete accounts that have been inactive for a set about of time. And they could penalize the uber spammers like Guy Kawasaki, who blankets billions of tweets a day with a team of spammy tweeters. Oh well.

Dead accounts don’t retweet. Brands don’t retweet. And the retweet is the holy grail of Twitter: for one shining moment your little message is broadcast into another’s network of followers. It’s a beautiful thing.

I’ve rarely been retweeted by a brand. It’s people on Twitter I’m most interested in. In the binge and purge process required to grow my Twitter account (Growing a Flock of Followers on Twitter) I’ve been thinking more about the types of accounts I follow.

We all know it’s a laborious process to find good/active tweeters to follow. Some of my ideas for that are:

Find LISTS that users have created on your subject. (But avoid the lists that were just made to build followers)

Find top tweeters and follow who they are following. Since we’re all doing this process, the good ones will be finding good tweeters to follow as well.

Using the “Who to follow” function on Twitter, but reading the bios, because Twitter makes some dumb recommendations.

The grind of following new users is a real pain in the ass. But it’s part of Twitter’s idea about keeping down the spammers. There used to be tools that allowed you to find and follow massive numbers of people at once, but they were squeezed out by API denials from Twitter. What I’ve started doing, as I’m browsing through this see of Twitter accounts is:

Follow only people who have faces not logos and have a bio and background image.

Again, Twitter is a numbers game, always has been always will be. The more ACTIVE followers you have the more activity your reach can produce. And if I told you up to 35% of your followers were either fake accounts or abandoned accounts you can see why continuing to build an “active” list is so important. Dead accounts don’t retweet. Brands don’t retweet. Mainly people retweet. Active people. And the retweet is the holy grail of Twitter: for one shining moment your little message is broadcast into another’s network of followers. It’s a beautiful thing.

You can judge the liveliness of your followers and the prowess of your tweets by how many RTs you get during any given week. Check your Twitter Analytics account (https://analytics.twitter.com/) and see what’s working for you. And always thank those that to take the time to RT you. And of course, follow them.

It’s a bit of a game. Play well, play intelligently, but don’t spam us. Please.

I worked with a guy once who complained about me following and unfollowing him over the course of several months. He was a complainer anyway, so I didn’t make much of it. Then he blocked me. I’d never been blocked on Twitter. There was some anger involved, or he would’ve done the simpler thing, follow me back. Or course, that never occurred to him.

Here’s the only long-term growth strategy I know on Twitter.

Follow a lot of people in your field.

Hope they follow you back in a few weeks.

Unfollow most of the people not following you back so you can follow more people.

See, Twitter has a limit of how many people you can follow vs how many people are following you. Then once you’ve crossed that barrier, even if your ratio has plenty of headroom (follow slots available) you will still be limited to following about 200 people per day. Then you get the rather nasty message, “You can follow no more people today. Either unfollow some people or wait until tomorrow.” And that’s what you do. You follow until you hit your limit. Then you “season the list” and wait for them to hopefully follow you back. Then you go through the reverse, unfollowing hundreds of people at a time.

It works pretty well. But it’s more of a game then an art. And anyone who gets mad at you for following then unfollowing them is only missing one part of the equation. If my “friend” had merely followed me back (but he was too proud to do that) I would not be unfollowing him every month of so. He must’ve thought his tweets were super powerful and his follow meant some kind of endorsement. It doesn’t.

And while we’re at it, you really don’t need to thank me for following you. Thank me if I add you to a LIST, but a follow is just a click and a giggle. In fact, if you thank me I’m liable to unfollow you on principle. Just don’t do it. And if you AUTO respond my follow with a “Thanks for following me now download my ebook at LINK” I will definately unfollow you. I believe people should be real on Twitter. And if you auto-respond you are just spamming my inbox.

Don’t be the guy who complains about other’s Twitter habits. I’m that guy. But be sure and use Twitter like a human rather than a spam spewing robot. We’ve already got plenty of those.

Let’s talk for a second about what the intention of Facebook as a social network is:

A place to keep up with friends

A place to share what’s good and what’s hard in your life

A place to ask for support

A place to wish distant “friends” happy birthday

An advertising platform

A personal soapbox for politics, music, food, games, tv

If we can agree that initial reason we joined Facebook is to keep up with friends then we can see how today it’s completely failing. Sure, we keep posting updates and pictures about ourselves and we keep getting responses from the same 10 people, but when we look at it, we’ve got over 400 friends. How come so few of them interact with us on Facebook, EVER?

Maybe they’re not all lurkers. Maybe my circle of friends ARE actually posting stuff on Facebook, but Facebook is not showing them to me. Even if they are my best friends in real life, I have to go through lots of effort to see their posts. And for those people we rarely see, are they just ignoring Facebook, or are they on Facebook at least once a day like most of us? Are they hoping to stay in touch with friends and having Facebook connections with about 20 of their friends as well?

So if I’ve got 400 friends on Facebook and I post a funny question: Do you prefer wine or coffee? Pick One. And only 10 people answer, is that because only 20 people saw it, and half of those people responded? What if the entire 400 people saw it and I got a 1% response rate? That would be 40 people. That’s what used to happen. You’d put up a funny rejoinder and you got some funny responses. But Facebook doesn’t work like that any more.

There are a few things you can do to alter your Facebook friends and experience, but a lot of the problem with Facebook comes down to their advertising model. See, Facebook was built to make money. And you and me sharing funny stories and pictures doesn’t make Facebook any money. They’d really like us to click on an advertisers link, or pay to promote our great news to more of our friends. That’s right, Facebook wants us to PAY to share out news with the world. But that’s not the way it started out, right? Facebook is free, right?

Here’s what you CAN do:

UnLIKE and UnFriend people and brands you really don’t care about.

Like things that your friends post, then you will see more of that friend’s posts.

Visit some of your friends pages and like some of their posts. This will up their FB value on your feed.

And share and comment when you really like something. These are the highest honor in Facebook-dom.

Here’s what’s screwed:

Facebook will continue to thin the “friends” on your newsfeed in favor of “paid friends.”

Ads and promoted posts will make up 80% of the information on YOUR wall.

Friends that you want to follow will continue to not show up on your news feed.

The more Facebook changes things, the more they move in favor of profits and away from privacy.

I don’t love Facebook, but there’s no other platform that gives me such range and reach on a number of subjects. I use Facebook for work and for play. I obsess on Facebook. I seek out friends and raise conversations with them. I complain to Facebook about their crappy interface and crappier Ad Management software. But I can’t leave Facebook for more than a few days. I left for 99 Days a while back, and I really enjoyed the time I got back, but I also missed the pseudo connection I share with so many of you, my Facebook friends.

Let’s make a pact. I’ll keep liking your posts when I see them. When you make a great one I’ll be sure and share it to my friends. In this way I will feel closer to you even if we’re “facebook only” friends and have never met in real-life. I’ll keep being a contributor and an influencer. You just do your thing. But stop round my wall and say HI once in a while. I promise I’ll LIKE you back.

I know we’re all *on* social media. And we’re all tweeting and posting and promoting stuff all over the place. But do you have a plan? And I don’t mean an activity plan. I mean an EMPIRE plan?

We spend so much of our day on social media, it’s a shame not to capture some of that energy in the direction of building our empire. Let me explain.

DAILY ACTIVITY

Tweet hot topics

Tweet my recent content from several partners and blogs

Facebook hot topics

Facebook recent content

Read email and pick up hot topics and stories for Twitter and Facebook.

Check Instagram – repost relevant stuff to Facebook

EMPIRE-BUILDING ACTIVITY

Life in general has a lot of social interaction online. But with a few extra tools you can make every tweet an empire-building tweet and every Facebook post an audience building post. Let’s see how.

Twitter: Why build only one Twitter account? Twitter is great when focused on a single topic. I have SIX twitter accounts that I use regularly. And each has a slightly different audience focus. This allows me to be very targeted in my sharing. And on the occasional tweet that fits across all six accounts, I have a much larger audience. Building Twitter followings is a pain in the ass, but if you do it on several accounts at once you can maintain the laser focus that active followers demand.

Facebook: Facebook pages are the secret weapon on Facebook. With a page, when you post you have the option to BOOST that post. (Yes, Facebook is a pay-for-reach platform now, get over it.) And here is how you make the most of boosting. 1. Post a lot of content to your page. (Relevant content only, please.) 2. Watch for posts that show good activity (Likes, Loves, Shares, Comments) and consider boosting those posts. If they did well with your organic reach, they will probably do well when you boost them beyond your Friends and Followers.

Thread your posts. If you are about to repost a political joke, consider adding a page about political humor and posting to that page first. 1. It reduces the overall Facebook posts that you send to friends. 2. It begins to build an audience for your brand of political humor. 3. If you want to build an audience in this area, you can now boost to Friends of Followers, who are likely to have similar interests.

Instagram: If Instagram is now bigger than Twitter in the US that makes it work looking at. Add a “follow me on instagram” to your social properties and blogs. I’m considering building a few new Instagram accounts for more specific topics. But don’t discount Instagram as a platform. You can include URLS in the text comments. And if you put your message in the image, then you’ve got a Pinterest-like growth platform. I’m still learning about Instagram, but it’s a force to be considered.

LinkedIn: The Facebook-for-Business is worthy of your attention. But they still haven’t figured out the Facebook “promote to friends and friends of friends” magic that has made Facebook such an easy pay-for-reach platform. My LinkedIn posts get about 1/10th the love as my Facebook posts, but I do notice my profile gets more views (a lot more views) when I’m posting. And if you can build up a “following” on LinkedIn, perhaps you will be posting to the choir.

SlideShare: Now owned by LinkedIn, slide share is my 2nd business website. I generate over 1,000 views a week on my Slideshare presentations. And while those clicks and reads are not translating into website traffic, I am building my reputation as a thought leader and strategist. If you’ve got a great PPT deck, share your genius with the rest of us. Need an idea for your PPT presentation, check out the best presentations on Slideshare.

YouTube: Owned by Google, YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine. If your content is not on YouTube you are missing a huge opportunity. Short-form video is in. Make several 2-minute videos, and get your message up on YouTube. Then share your video on YouTube. (Facebook has been making some noise about how great Video-on-Facebook is, but I still use YouTube to build my channels and playlists on various topics.)

Pinterest: I used to be a big fan. I don’t do much on Pinterest any more. If the topic is PIN-Friendly, by all means, give it a shot. But I’ve found the linking and promotional aspects of Pinterest to be lacking.

All About the Metrics

Here’s the bottom line: If it does not generate business (a contact request, a new client, a download) it’s not effective. Find the ONE thing that generates a SALE and then multiply that activity by 10X. Don’t become a spammer, but do find what works for your empire. Then continue to do that. And to know what’s working you must have a good grip on your metrics. Do you know what “activities” generated those last 10 “contact us” page views? Well, it’s time you did some digging into your Google Analytics.

Being social is what we all do everyday. Being GOOD at social is having a plan, measuring your success at reaching and exceeding plan goals, and coming up with the next 5 ideas to try. The needle is in the haystack of social media, but you can use groups and multiple accounts to sort the haystack into smaller piles before seeking the WIN.

Can you take your creative work on the road? Occasionally I love to work in coffee shops. If I’m listening for the cadence of dialogue I can merely take off my headphones and listen to the conversations around me. Need ideas? Listen.

You need to take your show on the road. If you’re feeling stuck, get out of the state you’re in, or at least get out of the house.

With my first laptop computer (way back when) I had the ability to capture my thoughts, ideas, and narratives in a very powerful way. The laptop also gave me mobile access to midi music composition. While I’ve never gotten very good at that, the capture of musical ideas today has become more of a decision about which tool to use rather than how to capture it.

Apples new Music Notes is a great example of an app that gets out of the way to facilitate your creative expression. Open the app and you are presented with a single button, start recording. You then capture a musical idea via voice, guitar, piano, whatever. When you go to play it back, the app gives you some accompaniment options. Drums and guitar. Sometimes the results are useful, sometimes they are more humourous. But the point is, Apple’s app allows you to record your idea. THEN it adds the fun.

You need to take your show on the road. If you’re feeling stuck, get out of the state you’re in, or at least get out of the house. Today’s technology gives us so many ways to connect with our on creativity. And many more ways to connect with others.

Do you paint? Well, I suppose digital paint isn’t quite the same thing. You might need a small watercolor set and a small pad. But everyone else… You need to keep refining your capture system.

Even without knowing which was the chorus and which was the bridge, I was able to know that I had gotten the idea down.

As an example, this weekend, I had a song idea arrive at a very in convenient moment. My fiancé had just arrived home from a long run. She was interested in greetings. The song idea was just emerging. She saw the look on my face and gently closed the door on the office so I could continue. I used the video recorder on my phone and got the idea down right in that moment. And as I was capturing it, I was able to build up three distinct parts. (verse, chorus, bridge) And even without knowing which was the chorus and which was the bridge, I was able to know that I had gotten the idea down. I could then go greet my woman and go on with the rest of my day.

It is important that you can be flexible and agile with your capture system. If you’re a painter you might need to draw. A composer you might need a simple recording program and some innovative input devices. The point is to make sure you can grab your system and go at a moments notice. Then, when the moment strikes you can capture it and get back to the moments of your life.

To a small blogger, like myself, a single post that generates over 1,200 views in two days is amazing. It’s not Viral with a capital “v” but it’s certainly viral.

The problem with this “hit” is the driver was Flipboard. And I have no way to track it back to the source, or the champion who added my Apple Watch post to their audience on Flipboard. I used all my tools. I saw the hit coming, I pushed a few extra times on my Twitter feed, but I was clear the Flipboard boost was a single event. I even wrote another quick Apple Watch post to see if I could get some residual traffic. And that worked pretty well. A normal post for me does about 200 reads on the first day. My “apple watch” post yesterday got 356 views. So it did get a boost, but not in the 1,200 views mark.

The feeling of a viral hit is awesome. The day after it looks like the metrics are giving me the finger.

What do we learn from a big hit on a post.

Do it again.

Refresh the content.

See out the influencer who drove the page views.

Write more content to the audience that read the post.

Other than that, a viral hit is fun, but it doesn’t really change my process or my plans for what’s next. I would love to architect a viral hit a week. Imagine where I could take the numbers on this site. But that’s not likely to happen. I’ll keep trying though. And I’ll keep picking myself back up after the rush of a hit lets me fall harder into ennui.